A Christmas Story (1983) * * * *

Directed by:  Bob Clark

Starring:  Peter Billingsley, Melinda Dillon, Darren McGavin, Scott Schwartz

A Christmas Story is about as perfect a Christmas movie as there is.   I usually don't review movies with such hyperbole, but A Christmas Story captures the spirit, joy, and nostalgia of Christmas better than any movie I've seen.   It invokes nostalgia for a seemingly simpler time and understands fully what Christmas means for children and adults.   

The film takes place in 1940ish Indiana.    The streets, houses, and lawns are perpetually snow covered.    It opens with a  parade and ends on Christmas night with the snow falling and Silent Night playing on the radio.    There is not a moment in the film in which the ground is covered in anything but white.    The kids are bundled up for their walk to school.    An overprotective mother wraps up her youngest son in clothes so tight, "he looked like a tick that was ready to pop."    If he falls over, he can't get up without help.  

The boy is the younger brother of Ralphie (Billingsley), whose dream is to receive a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas.    A Christmas Story is about Ralphie's quest to fulfill that dream.    When you're 10 years old, getting the right toy for Christmas is the most important thing in life.     The adults in Ralphie's life, from his mother to his grade school teacher, do not think the gun is a wise gift choice.  "You'll shoot your eye out."    Preposterous!   Such a thing couldn't possibly happen.    Back then, and even when I was growing up in the 70's and 80's, a toy's potential dangers were not even considered.    Nowadays, just opening a toy is like breaking into Fort Knox.    There are warning labels all over the packaging.    One feels like he is opening up a nuclear bomb than a toy.

Dangers be damned is Ralphie's attitude.   He strategizes and schemes in his tireless attempts to gain approval to get the gun.    On Christmas Eve, his eureka moment comes.   ("Santa Claus, the big cheese, the connection.   My mom and dad really slipped up this time.")    Ralphie has no idea that Santa is a disgruntled department store employee who doesn't want to work a minute past 9:00pm.   He sees nothing odd about Santa and his staff rushing the kids and then depositing them down the slide after telling Santa what they want for Christmas.  

The film is narrated by Jean Shepherd, who wrote the short story on which the film is based and tells his tale warmly, lovingly, and with attention to human nature.    The characters, with the exception of the school bully Scut Farcas (Zack Ward) are warm and lovable.    Scut is one of the obstacles Ralphie must elude daily on his way to school.    Scut and his toadie (there's a word you don't hear anymore) terrorize kids at random because, well, that's what they do.    When there are no more kids around to beat up on, they start punching each other in the arm.    The bullies are youngsters themselves, but are never seen attending school or living in a house.    In Ralphie's mind, they exist only to torment others and then disappear into the void.    This isn't crazy talk.    I used to believe teachers actually lived at school when I was a kid.

A Christmas Story is full of observations described colorfully by Shepherd, who takes on the role of an older Ralphie who is telling this story from memory.    Ralphie's father, known only as The Old Man (McGavin), is a kind, patient man who is forever at war with his furnace, his car that freezes up, and the neighbor's dogs who make his beloved turkey dinner a memory.   "That car could freeze up in the middle of summer on the equator."    He also receives a lamp as a sweepstakes award that is probably the most improper and grotesque lamp ever made.    I won't divulge what it is, but it raises the ire of Ralphie's mom (Dillon) to the point that she may or not have destroyed it while dusting the living room.

Ralphie's mom, who also is unnamed, is a woman forever trying to sit down with her family to eat a hot meal and get Randy's brother to actually eat what she cooks.    She always has something in the pot cooking while her husband goes to work at a job that is never revealed.    The parents are seen through Ralphie's 10-year old eyes, which means they are simply Mom and Dad without any complexities.    They simply exist as matters of fact and it is taken for granted that they will always be there.   To Ralphie, the worst part of his father's day is battling the furnace that's on the blink with unrepeatable curse words.    "My father wove a tapestry of obscenities that still hovers over Lake Michigan to this very day."  

I could name endless examples of the warm feelings A Christmas Story generates in scene after scene.    I could almost wind up retelling the entire movie, but it is best to leave the audience with a sense of wonder and surprise.    Does Ralphie receive the gun for Christmas at long last?    And what is with the pink bunny suit he is forced to wear (as seen in the picture)?    I will leave for you to discover or rediscover that.    This may be the only Christmas movie in which the wait staff at a Chinese restaurant sings Christmas carols while consistently mispronouncing the L's. 

A Christmas Story turns this into a treasured gem.   There are many other things to treasure about it.    Mostly the fact that the Christmas season feels differently than any other point in the year.   It is impossible to recreated until the time of year shows up on the calendar again.